Goner
by EclipseIsMyLifeNoMore
Summary: Why is Mrs. Mellark so bitter? Her story, Mr. Mellark's story and the day that Peeta became "the boy with the bread" Rated T for slight violence and to be safe. R&R please! Mr.Mellark X Mrs. Mellark, Peeta X Katniss


Hey guys! So who's SO FINNICKING excited for Hunger Games in March! I AM! And so I was reading some Hunger Games fan fiction and I realized there wasn't a fic that described Mr. and Mrs. Mellark which made me sad for some reason, even though I think Mrs. Mellark is an awful person, and so I started thinking about why Mr. Mellark ended up with her even though he loved Mrs. Everdeen. So voila! The one and only fan fiction for The Mellarks! R & R and May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor!

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or the book! The movie rights go to Lionsgate and the book rights to Suzanne Collins! I only own the Mellark brothers and the parent's names .

Pashka Mellark

I never wanted anyone but her. She was my world, my everything, the reason I smiled. And then she was gone. The miners had come to the festival like always and she saw him. I was raising my hand to wave when she first noticed him. Everybody watching them could see the spark that drew them to each other, like moths to a flame. It only took a month and she was never home. I tried to talk to her when she would come in to buy bread or the rare treat. She never listened to a word I said. Her eyes were full of him. The first time I saw them together, holding hands and smiling, him whispering in her ear words that made her blush, I went home and cried. She was supposed to be mine. And one day I knew the reason why she had fallen so suddenly in love with a stranger from the Seam. He was singing as he walked back from her house and not a bird sang. It was if the world had stopped just for him, if only he would never stop singing. That day I knew. She was a goner and I would never have her.

Batiste Mellark

Do you know what it's like to know he doesn't love you? Not just suspicions or hints, but the full blown facts. You see it in his eyes. Resignation to his…his…life that never would be filled with love like the future Mrs. Everdeen's life would be. His girlfriend, whom he thought was pretty, but never beautiful, like _her_, and the dates that were nice but never had a spark, like her dates were probably filled with. Finally when he asked me to marry him, I said yes. I loved him. I still love him. I just hate her. She took his love and made it hers. She had plenty of her own from that Seam miner, but she took my Paska's heart and left it outside on the dirt road where she first saw her boyfriend Daikon. And I will never be loved the way she is loved. I will never be loved. And people want to know why I'm cold?

Pashka Mellark

When our oldest son Bannock was born, I thought maybe I loved her. Not _that _way but because she loved me and I felt sorry. Sorry I couldn't do anything right. Sorry I couldn't even fall in love. Sorry I was broken. She smiled more when she had him. She would coo to him in his cradle, whisper rhymes to him as he slept. And she kissed me more. But it wasn't the same and she knew it. But I tried. I tried to be a good husband, a good father. I was a good father, I like to think. I held each of my boys and loved them with all of my heart. I loved Peeta the most though. Parents aren't supposed to have favorites but I did. Batiste saw it too and I think that's why she hated him so much. I think she hated him when he fell in love with Katniss Everdeen. I think that's why he was my favorite.

Batiste Mellark

The Everdeens were a constant presence in my life, whether they knew it or not. First when the eldest girl was born and then again when the following girl was born four years later. I sometimes want to curse the day the youngest, Prim, was born. But most of the time I see her blue eyes and blonde hair, just like Pashka's and mine, and I pretend she's mine. Maybe if I had a child like that, he would love me more. All I had were boys. Stupid boys who knew they were loved. He never yelled at them, never looked at them with that look of regret. He wanted children. He just didn't want their mother. I tried to be happy with the lot fate had given me, but with each boy, Bannock, Yufka, and finally Peeta, I stopped caring. So what if they hated me? Their father already did. I never hated them. Except Peeta. He was such a sweet boy until the day he came home with a story of the birds stopping to listen to Katniss Everdeen. He said he loved her and I knew he did too. Another Mellark lost to an Everdeen that would never love him. She'd probably fall in love with the Hawthorne boy whose mother did our laundry. And I would have to deal with another heartbroken boy while that girl skipped on unaware of the pain she had caused.

Pashka Mellark

My wife had become a bitter person since Peeta's first day of school. I'd seen the hardening of her eyes when my boy, my precious boy, had told her of his newfound love. At first, I was charmed by the littlest Mellark and his crush but over the years when I realized he really did love her like I loved her mother, I pitied him. For it is a hard thing to watch the wife you never wanted beat the son who only wanted Katniss. Then one night when he was eleven, I heard my wife screaming at an urchin digging through our trash. Normally, she scolded them but gave them scraps anyway. What child was this that had made her so angry? The only children she hated were…the Everdeens…but she liked Prim so it had to be...Katniss! I leapt to my feet and ran to the kitchen where Peeta had just accidentally burned a loaf of bread. Batiste screeched at him to throw it to the pigs and he scurried outside. I watched him as he locked eyes with, of course, Katniss Everdeen. He looked at the back door once and then tossed to the ground at her feet. Snatching it up, she looked at him for the longest moment before nodding, a sharp duck of her head, and disappearing into the darkness. Did he know what he had just done? The minute he came back in, he was given a sharp cuff to the face which sent him sprawling to the ground. As she yelled at him, we locked eyes for a moment and I saw a new, feverish light in his big blue eyes. He had burned that bread on purpose and knowing what his mother would do, he had given the bread to the girl anyway. He wasn't stupid as his mother called him; he was the bravest man I had ever met.

A few nights later, Peeta was sitting at the counter frosting some cookies when his mother left to go finish some errands.

"Dad, she looked at me today." He murmured as he smiled a small secret smile. Since the rainy night with the bread, it was the first time he had smiled. He hadn't talked to her once but that's when I knew. He was a goner. Just like his father was.


End file.
